Gut microbiota of broiler fed differently treated soybean varieties. SoybeanHeatMicrobiota

Soybean products are of high importance for the protein supply of particularly poultry. Heat treatment of soybeans are essential to ensure optimal digestibility because of intrinsic antinutri-tive factors typical for this feed category. However, excessive treatment promotes Maillard reac-tion and leads to reduced protein digestibility. Furthermore, Europe efforts to decrease depend-ence on imports of soybean products and to enlarge the local production. This process will in-clude the increase of the variability of soybean batches, posing great challenges to adequate processing conditions. Intrinsic soybean properties plus heat treatment intensity might have the ability to modulate the gut microbiota, which is of crucial importance for animal´s health and performance. To assess the influence of heat treatment and soybean variety on gut microbiota, two soybean cakes from two varieties were processed either at 110 °C or at 120 °C and subse-quently fed to 336 one-day old broiler chickens. After 36 days, animals were slaughtered and digesta of ileum and caecum collected. 16s rRNA amplicon sequencing of the extracted DNA re-vealed a high discrepancy between gut sections, but no differences between male and female birds. Significant differences attributed to the different soybean variety and heat intensity were detected for certain bacterial taxa. However, no effect on specific families or genera appeared. In conclusion, the results indicated the potential of processing conditions and soybean variety as microbiota-modulating factors.